Meet Marilyn Simmons Bowe | Achievement Coach, Mental Health Researcher, Emotions Assessor, Chakra Coach, Runner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marilyn Simmons Bowe and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marilyn, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
My thought process for starting my own business was simple: I wanted to help others to live their best lives. As such, after completing a self design quantitative PhD, where I looked at the effects of emotions on achievement, I parlayed my PhD into my business plan.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
At the stroke of midnight on July 10th, 1973, as a rising 7th grader, I stood and listened to the founding father of my country of origin, The Bahamas, address a newly independent nation. Sir Lindyn Oscar Pindling said to all of us poor little children, that as a newly independent country, they had nothing to give us, except a free public education. He went on to say that, after all, education would be our way out of the shantytowns that we lived in. I drank the proverbial Kool-Aid, and the rest is a powerful, personal history

Education is a passion of mine. More importantly, I am most passionate about helping others to understand who and how they are. After all, I was not supposed to amount to much by society’s standards, yet, I persevered, through a low socioeconomic childhood existence in an impoverished third world upbringing, both academically and socially.
I was always amazed by my ability to thrive academically, despite my childhood emotional state. I was so enthralled that I used this to build an academic and professional career geared toward all things academic, social, and emotional.
My greatest academic achievement was a self-designed quantitative PhD where I investigated the effects of emotions on achievement. I wanted to investigate the effects of emotions (SEL) on learning in STEM areas with respect to the national achievement gap, in the USA, for minorities when compared to non-minorities. As such, I was able to enhance the learning experience with SEL strategies, using my background in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research.

After all it was not easy for me to get to where I am today. My career path started when I graduated high school at the age of 15. After attending the College of the Bahamas, where I completed an AS degree in biochemistry, at the age of 17. Subsequently, I embarked upon a career as a junior pharmaceutical chemist. I carried out testing for research chemists, who develop the drug sodium naproxen, commonly known as Aleve, today.

This is my story. It defines my brand because I persevered against the odds. Especially since, I was not supposed to amount to much by society’s standards!

My brand motto is: “Everything that we ever hope to achieve will involve a battle between what we think and what we feel”.

However, what we actually achieve will be based on how well we know who and how we are.
I am Dr. Marilyn Simmons Bowe, Founder and CEO of CAMP Achievement, LLC. I use my expertise in Achievement Theory, along with the self-assessment tool, that I developed – which measures 96 possible emotional dispositions – to help put individuals, couples, families, and businesses on a path to achieve their goals and live their best lives. Additionally, I have authored two books and several online articles.

Being born a child of poverty in Nassau, Bahamas. Education was my way out, but it did not come easily. No electricity, no running water and minimal amounts of food in the early years made survival – tough at best! Yet, I persevered!
During my early adult years in The Bahamas, while continuing my pharmaceutical chemist career, I married and had two sons. In the early 1990s, I commuted between The Bahamas and Miami, FL to pursue and earn a BS in premedical biology with double minors in chemistry on education.

This quest for more education ultimately led to my divorce. As a new divorcee, with two young sons, I immigrated to the United states in the mid-1990s. In order to be more available for my sons, instead of continuing my pharmaceutical chemist career, I chose to be a science teacher in the inner cities of Miami-Dade county.
It was at this time that I observed that more research needed to be done to help assist African Americans students if we were to close the achievement gap in STEM areas for them, as under-represented minorities, in comparison to European American students.

Now retired from public service, I have had over 27 years of professional educational experience in the USA. I have served predominantly in inner city, high minority, low performing schools where I have had a stellar record of ensuring that every student that I served was afforded a first-rate academic experience.
Some of my roles during this time included Science Teacher (inner cities and rural areas of Florida and Georgia), College Instructor (rural Georgia), Department Chair (inner city of Florida), Academic Coach (inner city of Georgia), Instructional Coordinator (inner city of Florida), College Program Coordinator (rural Georgia), and District Secondary Science Specialist (suburban Utah).

I did not stop at merely educating my students. I took care of their other needs as well, especially cooking meals for them, in class, while they carried out their learning tasks. This was possible because I started every school year taking time with what I called my Unit 0.

Unit 0 was nothing more than an extended emotional interaction where I assessed every student to find out their dominant positive and negative emotions, in order for them to understand themselves as well as everyone else in the classroom.

I am particularly interested in the plight of minority children, especially males, being labeled and corralled into less than appropriate educational settings. This label then follows them through the system and eventually and unfortunately into what is colloquially known as the “school to prison pipeline”.

Currently, I combine all of my career and academic expertise as a Social Change Advocate and an Achievement Coach. As such, I help others to integrate my achievement emotions research into their everyday efforts. Moreover, I consider myself to be a “Merchant of Hope” (to use a term penned by Dr. Crystal Kuykendall in her book “From Rage to Hope”).

Additionally, I have been a passionate long-distance runner since 1989. I have run every day since January 1, 2012. All toll I have logged almost 30, 000 miles in that time period. Additionally, as of July 2024, I have completed 196 Full Marathons and fourteen ultramarathons including: 0ne 100-mile finish, Nine 50K finishes and four 50-mile finishes.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
When I am not empowering others, I am a homebody and a nature buff. I start each morning running between 8 to 10 miles through the woods along the river. My best friend is quite aware that I do nothing until my morning run is complete. So, if my best friend was visiting for a week, they are very similar to me in that we are basically home bodies. We both love to cook and so we would spend our time gathering ingredients from the international food market and preparing meals at home while we sip on cabernet sauvignon. Additionally, when we are not out in nature, we enjoy watching nature documentaries and historical documentaries. We would spend our time watching Smithsonian Channel and National Geographic while sipping on wine. When we did go out, our itinerary would include the botanical garden, visiting a different state or National Park each day. We both love car trips so we would relish these daily excursions within a four-hour driving distance from my place. We might venture forth for a fine meal one night to a restaurant that has a nature setting, such as, perhaps, Canoe on the River, in the Smyrna area. As for drinks and hanging out, I do not do that, and my best friend would not expect me to.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Credit and recognition in my story first and foremost goes to my parents. who are both deceased. Their examples of perseverance and dedication gave me the foundation to be who I am today. My father was orphaned at an early age. He found refuge by sleeping in the kitchens of restaurants, after hours. He was found one night and offered a job to wash dishes for his room and board. He became a successful restauranteur. My father was murdered in his restaurant in February 1986, at the age of 56. My mother never made it past third grade. Yet, she was able to start a small business, buy several properties and raise eight successful children. She passed away in October 2024 at the age of 93.

Website: https://drmarilynsimmons.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmarilyn_simmons/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarilynsimmons

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarilynSimmonsPhD

Other: https://linktr.ee/drmarilynsimmons

Image Credits
All images were taken by and belong to Dr. Marilyn Simmons Bowe, PhD.